V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered at the

First All-Russia Congress of Working Cossacks[1]

March 1, 1920

Delivered:1 March, 1920First Published:PravdaNos. 47, 48 and 49, March 2, 3 and 4, 1920; Published according to thePravdatext, verified with the booklet, V. I. Lenin, Speech Delivered at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Cossacks, Moscow, 1920Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, page 380-400Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

Comrades, allow me first of all to greet the
    Congress on behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars. I
    very much regret that I was unable to attend your meeting on the
    opening day and did not hear Comrade Kalinin’s report. But
    from what he has told me I conclude that many things relating to
    the direct and immediate tasks of Soviet development, and
    especially to the Cossacks, were dealt with in his speech. I
    should, therefore, like to deal mostly with the international
    situation of the Soviet Republic and the tasks which confront all
    the working masses, including the Cossacks, because of this
    situation.

Never has the international position of the Soviet Republic
    been as favourable and as triumphant as it is now. If some thought
    is given to the way our international situation has evolved in the
    course of two years of untold difficulties and incredible
    sacrifices, if some thought is given to the reasons for it, any
    intelligent person will discern the main forces, the mainsprings,
    and the chief alignment of forces in the incipient world
    revolution.

When, over two years ago, at the very beginning of the Russian
    revolution, we spoke about this approaching international, world
    revolution, it was a prevision, and to a certain extent a
    prediction. And the vast majority of the working people who did
    not live in the large cities and who had no had a schooling in the
    Party greeted this talk of an approaching world revolution with
    either mistrust or indifference, and at any rate with scanty
    understanding. And, indeed, it was impossible and would have been
    unnatural to expect the vast mass of the working population,
    especially the peasant, farming population, who are scattered over
    an immense territory, to form in advance anything like a correct
    idea of why world revolution was approaching, and whether it
    really was international. Our experience during these two
    incredibly difficult years and the experience of the working
    masses of remote border regions are worthy of attention, and not
    of merely being brushed aside with the remark that times were hard
    but have now become easier. Yes, we must give thought to the
    reason why things happened as they did, to the significance of
    their happening as they did, and to the lessons that are to be
    drawn from this; we must see which party’s views have been
    borne out by what our own history and world history have
    demonstrated during these two years. That is what I would like to
    deal with first of all.

From the standpoint of the international situation the issue is
    quite clear; when the matter is taken on a broad scale and
    regarded not from the standpoint of one party or of one country,
    but from the standpoint of all countries together, when the matter
    is taken on a broad scale, then particular and trifling details
    recede into the background and the chief motive forces of world
    history become apparent.

When we began the October Revolution by overthrowing the power
    of the landowners and capitalists, appealing for the termination
    of the war, and addressing this appeal to our enemies; when after
    this we came under the yoke of the German imperialists; when after
    this, in October and November 1918, Germany was crushed, and
    Britain, France, America and the other Entente countries became
    the lords of the earth—what was our situation then? The vast
    majority asked whether it was not then obvious that the cause of
    the Bolsheviks was hopeless. And many added, “Not only is it
    hopeless, but the Bolsheviks have turned out to be frauds. They
    promised peace, but instead, after the German yoke had been thrown
    off and Germany defeated, they were found to be enemies of the
    whole Entente—that is, of Britain, France, America and
    Japan, the most powerful countries in the world; and Russia,
    ruined, weakened and exhausted by the imperialist war, and
    moreover by the Civil War, has now to hold out in a fight against
    the foremost countries of the world.” This was easy to
    believe; and it is not surprising that lack of faith made
    indifference and often actual hostility to the Soviet government
    more and more widespread. There is nothing surprising in it. What
    is surprising is that we emerged victorious from the struggle
    against Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin who were supported in every
    possible way by all the wealthiest powers in the world, powers
    which no other military force on earth can even approximately
    equal. The truth of this is clear to everybody, even to the blind,
    and even to those who are worse than blind, those who refuse to
    see at any price—even to them it is clear that we have
    emerged from this struggle victorious.

How did this miracle happen? It is to this question that I
    would like most of all to direct your attention, because it most
    clearly reveals the chief motive forces of the entire
    international revolution. By analysing this question in a
    practical way, we can supply an answer to it, for this is
    something we have already been through; we are able to say what
    happened after the event.

We were victorious because we could be and were united, and
    because we were able to win over allies from the camp of our
    enemies. And our enemies, who are immeasurably stronger than we
    are, suffered defeat because they were not, never could be and
    never will be united, and because every month they fought against
    us brought them further disintegration within their own camp.

I shall now speak about the fact which proves these
    statements.

You know that after Germany was defeated, there was nobody in
    the world to oppose Britain, France and America. They had robbed
    Germany of her colonies, and there was no corner on earth, there
    was not a single country, where the military might of the Entente
    did not prevail. It would seem that under such circumstances,
    enemies of Soviet Russia as they were, they must have clearly
    realised that Bolshevism aims at world revolution. We have never
    made a secret of the fact that our revolution is only the
    beginning, that its victorious end will come only when we have lit
    up the whole world with these same fires of revolution. And we
    realised quite clearly that the capitalists were frenzied enemies
    of the Soviet government. It should be mentioned that when the
    European struggle was over they had an army of millions, and a
    powerful navy, to which we could not oppose even the semblance of
    a navy or an army of any strength. And all they had to do was to
    employ a few hundred thousand soldiers of this army of millions in
    the war against us in the same way as they were employed in the
    war against Germany, and the Entente would have crushed us. There
    cannot be the slightest doubt of this in the minds of those who
    have examined this question from the theoretical standpoint, and
    especially of those who went through the last war and know it from
    their own experience and observation.

Both Britain and France tried to seize Russia in this way. They
    concluded a treaty with Japan, who had taken practically no direct
    part in the imperialist war but who supplied a hundred thousand or
    so soldiers to crush the Soviet Republic, acting from the Far
    East. Britain at that time landed troops at Murmansk and
    Archangel, not to mention the movement in the Caucasus, while
    France landed soldiers and sailors in the South. This was the
    first historical phase of the struggle we sustained.

The Entente at that time had an army of millions and its
    soldiers were, of course, far superior to the whiteguard troops
    which were mustering in Russia and which had neither organisers
    nor arms. And it sent these soldiers against us. But what the
    Bolsheviks had predicted happened. They said that it was not only
    the Russian revolution that was concerned, but the world
    revolution as well, and that the Bolsheviks had allies in the
    workers of all civilised countries. These prophecies were not
    realised in their direct form at the time we proposed peace to all
    countries.[2]Our appeal did not meet with a general
    response. But the strike in Germany in January 1918[3]showed
    us that there we had the support of fairly large forces of workers
    and not only of Liebknecht, who even in the days of the Kaiser had
    the courage to declare publicly that the government and the
    bourgeoisie of Germany were robbers. This strike ended in
    bloodshed and the suppression of the workers. In the Entente
    countries, of course, the bourgeoisie deceived the workers, either
    lying about our appeal or not publishing it at all. For this
    reason the appeal we made in November 1917 to all the nations
    produced no direct result, and those who thought that this appeal
    alone would call forth revolution were bound, of course, to be
    bitterly disappointed. But we did not count only upon the appeal;
    we counted upon more profound motive forces. We said that the
    revolution would proceed differently in different countries, and
    that of course it was not merely a matter of removing a
    protégé of Rasputin or a villainous landowner, but of a
    struggle against the more developed and enlightened
    bourgeoisie.

And so, when the British landed troops in the North and the
    French in the South, the decisive test and the final denouement
    began. The question of who was right was now to receive its
    answer. Were the Bolsheviks right when they said that in order to
    win the fight they had to rely upon the workers? Or were the
    Mensheviks right when they said that an attempt to make a
    revolution in one country would be senseless and foolhardy,
    because it would be crushed by other countries? You heard this
    kind of talk not only from Party people but even from people who
    were just beginning to think about politics. And then came the
    acid test. For a long time we did not know what the result would
    be; for a long time we could not judge the result; but now, after
    the event, we know what it was. Even in the English newspapers, in
    spite of the frenzied lies about the Bolsheviks told by all the
    bourgeois papers—even in those papers letters began to
    appear from British soldiers near Archangel, saying that on
    Russian soil they had come across leaflets in English explaining
    to them that they had been deceived, that they were being led
    against workers and peasants who had set up their own state. These
    soldiers wrote that they did not want to fight. As for France, we
    know that there was a mutiny in the navy for which tens, hundreds,
    and perhaps thousands of Frenchmen are still doing penal
    servitude. These sailors declared that they would not fight the
    Soviet Republic. We can now see why neither French troops nor
    British troops are fighting us at present, why the British
    soldiers have been removed from Archangel, and why the British
    Government dare not bring them on to our soil.

One of our political writers, Comrade Radek, wrote that the
    Russian soil would prove to be such that no soldier from any other
    country who set foot on it would be able to fight. This seemed to
    be too boastful a promise, it seemed a delusion. But it proved
    correct. The soil on which the Soviet revolution had taken place
    proved to be very dangerous to all countries. It seems that the
    Russian Bolsheviks were right; they had already managed to bring
    about unity among the workers during the time of the tsar, and the
    workers had managed to create small cells, which greeted all who
    believed them, whether French workers or British soldiers, with
    propaganda in their own languages. True, we had only tiny sheets,
    whereas in the British and French press propaganda was carried on
    by thousands of newspapers and every phrase was publicised in tens
    of thousands of columns. We issued only two or three quarto sheets
    a month; at best it worked out at only one copy for every ten
    thousand French soldiers.[4]I am not certain
    whether even that many reached their destination. Why, then, did
    the French and British soldiers believe them? Because we told the
    truth, and because when they came to Russia they saw that they had
    been deceived. They had been told that they were to defend their
    own country; but when they came to Russia they found that they
    were to defend the rule of the landowners and capitalists, that
    they were to crush the revolution. The reason we were able to win
    over these people in two years was that although they had
    forgotten that they had once executed their own kings, the moment
    they stepped on to Russian soil, the Russian revolution and the
    victories of the Russian workers and peasants reminded the
    soldiers of France and Britain of their own revolutions, and,
    thanks to the events in Russia, they recalled what had once
    happened in their own countries.

And this showed that the Bolsheviks were right, that our hopes
    were better founded than those of the capitalists, although we had
    neither funds nor arms, while the Entente had both arms and an
    invincible army. But we won the sympathy of these invincible
    armies, so much so that they dare not bring either British
    soldiers or French soldiers against us, knowing from experience
    that every such attempt turns against them. That is one of the
    miracles that have occurred in Soviet Russia.

Now, after four years of war, when ten million people have been
    killed and twenty million crippled, when the imperialists are
    asking themselves what the war was for—such questions lead
    to some very interesting revelations. Certain negotiations which
    took place in 1916 were recently made public in France—the
    Austrian monarch began peace negotiations with France as early as
    1916, but France kept quiet about it, and Albert Thomas, who
    called himself a socialist and who was then a member of the
    Cabinet, came to Russia to promise Constantinople, the Dardanelles
    and Galicia to Nicholas II. All these facts have now become widely
    known, they have been published in a French newspaper. The French
    workers are now saying to Albert Thomas: “You said that you
    had joined the Cabinet in order to protect our French fatherland
    and the interests of the French workers; yet in 1916, when the
    Austrian monarch proposed peace, you, Albert Thomas, concealed the
    fact, and as a result millions of people perished in order that
    the French capitalists might make more profit.” These
    exposures are not ended yet. We began them by publishing the
    secret treaties, and the whole world saw why millions of people
    had perished, why rificed in order that Nicholas II might secure
    the Dardanelles and Galicia. All the imperialists knew this. So
    did the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; and if they did
    not, they were downright idiots not to have studied politics and
    diplomacy enough to have known what has now been made public in
    the French papers. These exposures are now becoming more profound,
    and there will be no end to them. Thanks to this, the workers and
    peasants in every country are beginning more and more keenly to
    sense the truth and to realise what the imperialist war was
    about. That is why they are beginning to believe us, to see that
    we spoke the truth, and to see that the imperialists were lying
    when they led them to defend the fatherland.

That explains the miracle of our having won the sympathies of
    the soldiers of Britain and France, weakend helpless as we were
    from the military standpoint. It is no longer a prediction, but a
    fact. True, the victory cost us untold hardships and incredible
    sacrifices. During the past two years we have suffered untold
    torments of starvation which became particularly acute when we
    were cut off from the grain of the East and the
    South. Nevertheless, we gained a victory, and a victory that is
    not only for our country, but for all countries, for all
    mankind. Never before has there been a case in history when
    powerful military states have been unable to fight a country so
    helpless in the military field as the Soviet Republic. Why did
    this miracle happen? Because when we, the Bolsheviks, led the
    Russian people into the revolution, we knew very well that this
    revolution would be a painful one, that it would cost millions of
    lives; but we knew that we would have the working masses of all
    countries behind us, and that our truth, by exposing all lies,
    would triumph more and more as time went on.

After the campaign of the powers against Russia had failed,
    they tried another weapon. The bourgeoisie of those countries have
    hundreds of years of experience, and were able to replace their
    own unreliable weapons by others. At first they tried to use their
    own soldiers to crush and stifle Russia; now they are trying it
    with the help of the border states.

Tsarism, the landowners and the capitalists used to oppress a
    number of the border nations—Latvia, Finland, and so on,
    where they aroused hatred by centuries of oppression. “Great
    Russian” became a most hateful word to all these nations,
    which had been drenched in blood. And so the Entente, having
    failed in fighting the Bolsheviks with the help of its own
    soldiers, is now banking on the small states, hoping to strangle
    Soviet Russia with their help.

Churchill, who is pursuing the same sort of policy as Nicholas
    Romanov, wants to fight, and is fighting, without paying the
    slightest heed to parliament, He boasted that he would lead
    fourteen states against Russia—that was in 1919—and
    that Petrograd would he captured in September and Moscow in
    December. He was a little too boastful. He banked on the hatred of
    Russia in all these small states; but he forgot that in these
    small states there is a clear understandiiig of what Yudenich,
    Koichak and Denikin mean. They were once within a few weeks of
    complete victory.

    During Yudenicii’s campaign, when he was quite close to
    Petrograd, an article appeared inThe Times,the richest
    of the British newspapers— I read this editorial
    myself—which implored, ordered, demanded that Finland help
    Yudenich—the eyes of the whole world are upon you; you will
    save liberty, civilisation and culture all over the world. Take
    the field against the Bolsheviks! This is what Britain said to
    Finland, and Britain has Finland completely in her pocket; it was
    said to Finland, who is up to her ears in debt, and who dares not
    utter a squeak because without Britain she has not enough grain to
    last her a week.

Such was the pressure brought to bear on all these small states
    to make them fight Bolshevism. And it failed twice. It failed
    because the peace policy of the Bolsheviks turned out to be a
    serious one, and was judged by its enemies to be more honest than
    the peace policy of any other country, and because a number of
    countries thought, “Much as we hate Great Russia, which used
    to suppress us, we know that it was Yudenich, Koichak and Denikin
    who suppressed us, and not the Bolsheviks.” The former head
    of the Finnish white-guard government has not forgotten that in
    November 1917 he personally received a document from my hands in
    which we said without the slightest hesitation that we
    unreservedly recognised Finland’s independence.[5]

At that time this seemed a mere gesture. It was thought that
    the revolt of the Finnish workers would cause it to be
    forgotten. But no, such things are not forgotten when they are
    corroborated by the whole policy of a definite party. And even the
    Finnish bourgeois government said, “Let’s think it
    over. After all, we have learned something during a hundred and
    fifty years of oppression by the Russian tsars. If we take the
    field against the Bolsheviks, we shall help to install Yudenich,
    Kolchak and Denikin. And who are they? Don’t we know? Are
    they not the same breed of tsarist generals who stifled Finland,
    Latvia, Poland and many other nationalities? And shall we help
    these enemies of ours to fight the Bolsheviks? No, let us
    wait!”

They did not dare to refuse outright—they are dependent
    on the Entente. They did not help us directly; they waited,
    temporised, wrote Notes, sent delegations, formed commissions, sat
    in conference, and did so until Yudenich, Kolchak and Denikin had
    been crushed and the Entente defeated in the second campaign
    too. We were the victors.

If all these saall states had taken the field against
    us—they were supplied with hundreds of millions of dollars
    and the finest guns and weapons, and had British instructors who
    had been through the war—if they had taken the field against
    us, there is not the slightest doubt that we would have been
    defeated. Everybody knows that very well. But they did not take
    the field against us, because they realised that the Bolsheviks
    are more honest. When the Bolsheviks say that they recognise the
    independence of any nation, that tsarist Russia was based on the
    oppression of other nations, and that the Bolsheviks never
    supported this policy, do not support it and never will support
    it, and that they will never go to war to oppress other
    nations—when they say that, they are believed. We know this
    not from the Latvian or Polish Bolsheviks, but from the
    bourgeoisie of Poland, Latvia, the Ukraine and so on.

Here the international significance of the Bolshevik policy had
    its effect. It was a test on international and not on Russian
    soil. It was a test by fire and sword, and not by words. It was a
    test in the last decisive struggle. The imperialists realised that
    they had no soldiers of their own, that they could strangle
    Bolshevism only by mustering international forces; but all
    international forces were beaten.

What does imperialism mean? It means that a handful of rich
    powers have a stranglehold on the whole world, when they know that
    they have the fifteen hundred million people of the world in their
    hands and have a stranglehold on them, and when these fifteen
    hundred million feel what British culture, French culture and
    American civilisation mean—rob for all you are worth! Today
    three-quarters of Finland has already been bought up by American
    multimillionaires. The officers who came from Britain and France
    to our border states to instruct their troops behaved like
    insolent scions of the Russian nobility in a defeated
    country. They all profiteered right and left. And the more the
    Finnish, Polish and Latvian workers starve, the more they are
    squeezed by a handful of British, American and French
    multimillionaires and their henchmen. And this is going on all
    over the world.

The Russian Socialist Republic alone has raised the standard of
    war for real emancipation; and sympathy is turning in its favour
    all over the world. Through the small countries, we have won the
    sympathy of all the nations of the world, and they represent
    hundreds of millions of people. They are at present oppressed and
    downtrodden, they are the most backward part of the population;
    but the war has enlightened them. Huge masses of people were drawn
    into the imperialist war. Britain brought regiments from India to
    fight the Germans. France called millions of Africans to the
    colours to fight the Germans. They were formed into shock units
    and hurled into the most dangerous sectors, where they were mown
    down like grass by machine-guns. But they learned something. Under
    the tsar the Russian soldiers said, “If die we must, then
    let it be fighting the landowners”—now the Africans
    say, “If die we must, then let it not be to help the French
    predators rob the German capitalist predators, but to emancipate
    ourselves from the capitalists, German and French.” In every
    country of the world, even in India, where three hundred million
    people are oppressed and treated as labourers by the British,
    minds are awakening and the revolutionary movement is growing from
    day to day. They all look towards one star, the star of the Soviet
    Republic, because they know that it made tremendous. sacrifices in
    order to fight the imperialists, and that it has withstood the
    most severe trials.

This was the significance of the second card of the Entente to
    he beaten—victory on an international scale. It means that
    our peace policy is approved by the vast majority of people all
    over the world. It means that the number of our allies in all
    countries is growing—much more slowly than we would like, it
    is true, but growing nevertheless.

The victory we won in the offensive engineered against us by
    Churchill shows that our policy was right. And after that we won a
    third victory—a victory over the bourgeois intelligentsia,
    over the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, who in all
    countries were rabidly hostile to us, They all began to oppose the
    war against Soviet Russia. In all countries the bourgeois
    intelligentsia, the Socialist Revolutionaries and
    Mensheviks—this breed, unfortunately, is to be found in all
    countries (applause) —condemned interference in Russian
    affairs. They declared in all countries that it was a
    disgrace.

When Britain proposed that the Germans blockade Soviet Russia,
    and Germany refused, this exhausted the patience of the British
    and other Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They said,
    “We are enemies of the Bolsheviks and regard them as
    violators and robbers. But we cannot support the proposal that the
    Germans join us in strangling Russia by a hunger blockade.”
    And so, within the camp of the enemies, inside their own
    countries, in Paris, London and so on, where Bolsheviks are being
    hounded and treated in the way revolutionaries were treated under
    the tsar—in all cities, the bourgeois intelligentsia have
    issued the call “Hands off Soviet Russia I” In Great
    Britain this is the slogan under which the bourgeois
    intelligentsia are summoning meetings and issuing manifestos.

That is why the blockade had to be lifted. They could not
    restrain Estonia, and we have concluded peace and can trade with
    her. We have cut a window open on the civilised world. We have the
    sympathy of the majority of the working people, and the
    bourgeoisie are anxious to start trade with Russia as soon as
    possible.

Now the imperialists are afraid of us and they have reason to
    be, for Soviet Russia has emerged from this war stronger than
    ever. British writers have written that the armies all over the
    world are disintegrating, and that if there is any country in the
    world whose army is gaining strength, that country is Soviet
    Russia. They tried to slander Comrade Trotsky and said that this
    was so because the Russian army is being kept under iron
    discipline, which is enforced by ruthless measures, as well as by
    skilful and widespread agitation.

We have never denied this. War is war, and it demands iron
    discipline. Have you capitalist gentlemen not employed the same
    methods? Have you not carried on agitation? Have you not a hundred
    times more paper and printing works? To compare our literature
    with yours is like comparing a molehill to a mountain. Yet your
    propaganda has failed, and ours has succeeded.

The
    Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks tried an experiment to
    see whether it was not possible to get along with the capitalists
    peacefully, and to pass from them to social reform. In Russia they
    wanted to go over to social reform in an amicable way, so as not
    to offend the capitalists. They forgot that capitalists are
    capitalists, and that the only thing to do with them is to
    vanquish them. They say that in the Civil War the Bolsheviks have
    drenched the country in blood. But, my dear
    Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, did you not have eight
    months to experiment in? Were you not in power with Kerensky from
    February to October 1917, during which period you had the help of
    all the Cadets, of the whole Entente, of all the richest countries
    in the world? Your programme then was one of social reform,
    without civil war. Is there a fool in the. world who would have
    resorted to revolution if you had really begun social reform? Why
    did you not do so? Because your programme was a blank, an absurd
    dream. Because it is impossible to come to terms with the
    capitalists and secure their obedience peacefully, especially
    after four years of imperialist war. Do you think there are no
    clever people in Britain, France and Germany who understand that
    they went to war for the division of colonies, and that ten
    million people were killed and twenty million crippled over the
    division of the spoils? That is what capitalism means. How can you
    expect to persuade, how can you expect to come to terms with this
    capitalism which has crippled twenty million people and killed ten
    million? And we say to the Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries, “You had the opportunity of
    trying your experiment. Why did nothing come of it? Because your
    programme was a sheer utopia, a utopia not only for Russia, but
    even for Germany, the Germany where the German Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries, whom nobody will listen to, are now in
    power, the Germany where a German Kornilov, armed from head to
    foot, is preparing reaction,[6]the German republic
    where fifteen thousand workers have been slaughtered in the
    streets of the cities. And this is called a democratic
    republic!” Yet the German Mensheviks and
    Socialist-Revolutionaries have the hardihood to say that the
    Bolsheviks are a wicked lot, that they have reduced the country to
    a state of civil war, whereas in their own country social peace
    prevails and only fifteen thousand workers have been killed in the
    streets!

They say that the Civil War and bloodshed in Russia are due to
    the fact that it is a backward country. But tell us, why is the
    same thing happening in countries like Finland which are not
    backward? Why is there a White Terror in Hungary which has shocked
    the whole world? Why were Luxemburg and Liebknecht assassinated in
    the German republic, where, since the overthrow of the Kaiser, the
    Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries have been in power? And
    why is it not the Mensheviks who are strong there, but
    Kornilov—and the Bolsheviks too, who, although they are
    crushed, are strong because of their faith in the justice of their
    cause and because of their influence over the masses?

There you have the world revolution—which they said the
    Bolsheviks were using to deceive the people with, when as a matter
    of fact all hopes of compromise proved to be sheer nonsense.

A big tussle is developing among the bourgeois countries
    themselves. America and Japan are on the verge of flinging
    themselves at each other’s throats because Japan sat snug
    during the imperialist war and has grabbed nearly the whole of
    China, which has a population of four hundred million. The
    imperialist gentlemen say, “We are in favour of a republic,
    we are in favour of democracy; but why did the Japanese grab more
    than they should under our very noses?” Japan and America
    are on the verge of war, and there is absolutely no possibility of
    preventing that war, in which another ten million will be killed
    and twenty million crippled. France, too, says, “Who got the
    colonies?—Britain.” France was victorious, but she is
    up to her ears in debt; she is in a hopeless position, whereas
    Britain has piled up wealth. Over there, new combinations and
    alliances are already being engineered. They want to fling
    themselves at each other’s throats again over the division
    of colonies. And an imperialist war is again brewing and cannot be
    prevented. It cannot be prevented, not because the capitalists,
    taken individually, are vicious—individually they are just
    like other people —but because they cannot free themselves
    of the financial meshes in any other way, because the whole world
    is in debt, in bondage, and because private property has led and
    always will lead to war.

All this is causing the roots of the international revolution
    to strike deeper and deeper. Because of this we have won over the
    French and British soldiers; because of this we have won the
    confidence of the small states, and our international position is
    now better than ever before. And on the basis of a simple
    calculation we can say that though many hardships still await us,
    the worst difficulties have already been overcome. The
    all-powerful Entente no longer holds out any terrors for us: we
    have defeated it in decisive battles.(Applause.)

True, they may still incite Poland against us. The Polish
    landowners and capitalists are growling and threatening, saying
    that they want to get back the territory of I772,[7]that they want to subjugate the Ukraine. We know that France is
    inciting Poland, flinging millions into that country, because
    France is bankrupt anyhow and is now putting her last stake on
    Poland. And we say to the comrades in Poland that we respect her
    liberty as we respect the liberty of every other nation, and that
    the Russian workers and peasants, who have experienced the yoke of
    tsarism, know very well what that yoke meant. We know that it was
    a heinous crime to divide Poland up among the German, Austrian and
    Russian capitalists, and that this division doomed the Polish
    nation to long years of oppression, when the use of the native
    language was regarded as a crime, and when the whole Polish nation
    was brought up in one idea, namely, to throw off this treble
    yoke. We therefore understand the hatred the Poles feel, and we
    declare to them that we shall never cross the line on which our
    troops are now stationed—and they are stationed a long way
    from any Polish population. We are proposing peace on this basis,
    because we know that this will be a tremendous acquisition for
    Poland. We do not want war on account of frontiers, because we
    want to obliterate that accursed past when every Great Russian was
    regarded as an oppressor.

But since Poland responds to our peace proposal by silence,
    since she continues to give a free hand to French imperialism,
    which is inciting her to a war against Russia, since fresh
    trainloads of munitions are arriving in Poland every day and the
    Polish imperialists threaten to start a war on Russia, we say,
    “Just try it! You’ll get a lesson you’ll never
    forget.”(Applause.)

When soldiers died during the imperialist war for the
    enrichment of the tsar and the landowners, we said frankly and
    openly that defence of the fatherland in the imperialist war was
    treachery, that it meant defence of the Russian tsar, who was to
    get the Dardanelles, Constantinople and so on. But now that we
    have published the secret treaties, now that we have embarked on a
    revolution against imperialist war, now that we have borne untold
    hardships for the sake of that revolution, now that we have shown
    that the capitalists in Russia have been suppressed and dare not
    even dream of returning to the old system, we say that we are not
    defending the right to plunder other nations, but are defending
    our proletarian, revolution, and will defend it to the very
    end. The Russia which has been emancipated and which for two years
    has borne untold suffering for the sake of her Soviet
    revolution—that Russia we shall defend to our last drop of
    blood!(Applause.)

We know that the time is gone when we were pressed on all sides
    by imperialist armies and when the working folk of Russia still
    did not understand the tasks that confronted us. Guerrilla methods
    prevailed then, each tried to grab a weapon for himself without
    consideration for the cause as a whole, and disorder and robbery
    prevailed in the localities. In the course of, these two years we
    have created a united and disciplined army. It has been a very
    difficult task. You know that the science of war cannot be learned
    all at once and you also know that only the officers, the colonels
    and generals, who have remained from the tsarist army, know that
    science. You have heard, of course, that these old colonels and
    generals have been responsible for a great deal of treachery,
    which cost us tens of thousands of lives. All such traitors had to
    he cleared out, and at the same time we had to select a corps of
    commanders from among the former officers, so that the workers and
    peasants might learn from them; for a modern army cannot be built
    up without science, and we have had to put it in the hands of
    military experts. It has been a difficult task, but that, too, we
    have accomplished.

We have created a united army, an army which is
    now directed by the advanced section, by experienced Communists,
    who have everywhere succeeded in putting agitation and propaganda
    on a proper footing. True, the imperialists are also carrying on
    propaganda, but the peasants are already beginning to understand
    that there are different kinds of propaganda. They are beginning
    to tell by instinct what is true and what is false. At any rate,
    the propaganda which is being carried on by the Mensheviks and
    which was carried on by Kolchak and Denikin is no longer as
    successful as it was. Take their posters and pamphlets. They talk
    about a Constituent Assembly, they talk about liberty and a
    republic. But the workers and peasants, who have secured liberty
    at the price of their blood, now understand that the term
    “Constituent Assembly” serves as a screen for the
    capitalists; and if anything decided the issue of the struggle
    against Kolchak and Denikin in our favour, despite the fact that
    they were supported by the Great Powers, it was that both the
    peasants and working Cossacks, who for a long time remained in the
    other camp, have in the end come over to the workers and
    peasants—and it was only this that finally decided the war
    and brought about our victory.

With this victory behind us, we must now do our utmost to
    consolidate it on another front, the bloodless front, the front of
    the war against the economic chaos to which we have been reduced
    by the war against the landowners and capitalists, against Kolchak
    and Denikin. You know what this victory has cost us; you know what
    a desperate fight we had to put up when we were cut off from the
    graingrowing regions, from the Urals and Siberia. At that time the
    Moscow and Petrograd workers had to suffer intolerable torments of
    hunger. Attempts were made to frighten you with the term
    “dictatorship of the proletariat”, to frighten the
    peasants and working Cossacks, and instil into their minds the
    idea that dictatorship meant the arrogant rule of the
    worker. Actually, however, while Britain and America were doing
    all they could to support Kolchak and Denikin, the workers of the
    central cities, exercising their dictatorship, did their best to
    show everyone by their example how to break away from the
    landowners and capitalists and march with the working people; for
    labour unites, while property disunites.
    That was the thesis we stuck to throughout these two years, and it
    led us to victory. We were united by labour, whereas the Entente
    is steadily disintegrating, because property has turned the
    imperialists into wild beasts, who from first to last are always
    squabbling over the division of spoils. Labour has made us a force
    that is uniting all the working people. And now
    “dictatorship” is a word that can frighten only
    utterly ignorant people, if such are still to be found in
    Russia.

I do not know if any person still remains who has not been
    taught a lesson by Kolchak and Denikin, and who has not come to
    realise what the dictatorship of the proletariat means—it
    means that never has the proletariat of Petrograd, Moscow and the
    industrial centres suffered such hardships as during these past
    two years. The peasants of the producing gubernias are now in such
    a position that they, having possession of the land, get the whole
    product for themselves. Since the Bolshevik revolution the Russian
    peasants, for the first time in thousands of years, are working
    for themselves and can feed better. Yet at the same time, during
    these two years of struggle the workers, the proletariat, while
    exercising their dictatorship, have been suffering untold torments
    of hunger. You now see that dictatorship means leadership, the
    union of the disunited and scattered working masses, a single,
    closely—knit whole directed against the capitalists in order
    to defeat them and to prevent a recurrence of the bloodshed in
    which ten million people perished and twenty million were
    crippled. The union of all the labouring people, a single iron
    will is required to defeat a force like this, which can rely on
    mighty armies and modern culture. This single iron will can be
    furnished only by the working masses, only by the workers, the
    proletariat, only by those class-conscious workers whom decades of
    strikes and demonstrations have trained in struggle, and who have
    succeeded in overthrowing tsarism. It can be furnished only by the
    workers who have borne the brunt of the two years of unparalleled
    civil war, fighting in the front ranks and creating a united Red
    Army, which has been joined by tens of thousands of the finest
    workers, peasants and military and political students, who have
    been the first to perish and who, in Moscow, Petrograd, I
    vanovo-Voznesensk, Tver, Yaroslavi and all the industrial cities,
    have been suffering the terrible torments of hungers And this
    hunger has welded the workers together and brought the peasants
    and working Cossacks of the producing gubernias to see for
    themselves that the Bolsheviks were right, for the workers were
    thus enabled to hold their own in the struggle against the
    whiteguards.

That is why the working class is entitled to say that by these
    two years of sacrifice and war it has proved to all the working
    peasants and to every working Cossack that we must unite and join
    forces. We must fight those who are profiteering on the famine
    because they find it more profitable to sell grain at a thousand
    rubles a pood than to sell it at the fixed price. There is money
    to be made that way, but it leads back to the old times, and we
    shall once more find ourselves in that accursed pit where tsarisin
    ruled and where the capitalists condemned humanity to the
    imperialist slaughter for the sake of their profits. It would turn
    us back, and that i something that cannot be allowed. After the
    struggle against Kolchak and Denikin, the working peasants and
    Cossacks came to realise the truth that we need unity, and they
    are taking their places by the side of the workers and looking
    upon the working class as their leaders. The working peasants saw
    that no injury derived from the workers’ government for
    there was none to see; it was only the landowners, capitalists and
    kulaks who did, but then, they are the worst enemies of the
    working people, they are the allies of those imperialists who were
    the cause of the bloody war and all the miseries of the
    people. All working people must unite—only then shall we be
    victorious.

The bloody war is over and we are now waging a bloodless war, a
    war against the economic chaos, ruin, poverty and disease to which
    we have been reduced by four years of imperialist war and two
    years of civil war. You know that the economic chaos is
    terrible. In the border regions of Russia, in Siberia and in the
    South there are today tens of millions of poods of grain; millions
    of poods have already been collected and transported, yet there is
    a terrible famine in Moscow, people are dying of starvation
    because grain cannot be delivered; and it cannot be delivered
    because the Civil War has completely devastated the country,
    wrecked the railways and destroyed scores of bridges. Locomotives
    have broken down, and we are unable to repair them quickly. We are
    now trying with great difficulty to secure aid from abroad. We
    know, however, that it is now possible to start on the complete
    restoration of industry.

How are we going to restore industry when we cannot exchange
    manufactured goods for grain because there aren’t any?

We know that when the Soviet government takes grain from the
    peasants at a fixed price it pays them only in paper. What is this
    paper worth? Although it is not the price of the grain we can only
    pay in paper money. But we say that this is essential, that the
    peasants must give their grain as a loan. Is there a single
    well-fed peasant who would refuse bread to a hungry worker if he
    knew that this worker, once he had been fed, would repay him in
    goods? No honest and politically-conscious peasant would refuse to
    give grain as a loan. Peasants who have surplus grain must let the
    state have it for paper money—and that means a loan. The
    only people who do not understand, who do not realise this, are
    the supporters of capitalism and exploitation, those who want the
    well-fed man to profit even more at the expense of the hungry
    man. The workers’ government cannot tolerate that, and we
    shall stop at no sacrifice to combat it.(Applause.)

We have now concentrated all our forces on the restoration of
    industry and are steadfastly waging this new war, in which we
    shall be as victorious as we have been hitherto. We have
    instructed a commission of scientists and engineers to draw up a
    plan for the electrification of Russia. The plan will be ready in
    two months and will enable us to got a full and clear picture of
    how, in a few years, the whole of Russia will be covered by a
    network of electric transmission lines, will be restored in a new
    way, not the old way, and how she will achieve that culture which
    our prisoners of war saw in Germany.

That is the way we must restore our industry, and that is the
    way we shall return a hundredfold the loan of grain we are taking
    from the peasants. We know that this cannot be done in a year or
    two; the minimum programme of electrification is calculated for a
    period of not less than three years, and the complete success of
    this advanced industry will require not less than ten years. But
    if we were able to I hold on for two years in such a bloody war,
    we shall be able to hold on for ten years and more in face of any
    difficulties. We have gained that experience in leading the masses
    with the help of urban workers which will carry us through all
    difficulties on this bloodless front of struggle against economic
    chaos and will lead to greater victories than those we gained in
    the war against international
    imperialism.(Applause.)

[1]The First All-Russia Congress of Working Cossacks was held
    February 29-March 6, 1920. It was attended by 339 delegates from
    nearly all Cossack regions. The agenda of the Congress was the
    following: Soviet development in Cossack regions; food policy;
    organisation of national economy, etc. Lenin took part in the work
    of the Congress, and showed the true road for the working Cossacks
    in his speech on March 1. The Congress denounced the attempts of
    the upper strata of Cossacks, in company with the landowners and
    bourgeoisie, to separate the Cossacks from the common cause of all
    the working people . The Congress resolution stressed that the
    chief task of the working Cossacks was to unite with the workers
    and peasants of Soviet Russia. The Congress expressed in favour of
    the participation of working Cossacks in Soviet governmental
    bodies on the same conditions as all workers and peasants, called
    upon the Cossacks to strengthen the union of workers and peasants
    and concentrate all efforts on overcoming the economic devastation
    in the country.

[2]Lenin refers to the Decree on Peace adopted by the Second
    All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and
    Soldiers’ Deputies on October 26 (November 5), 1917 (see
    present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 249-53).

The Decree on Peace proposed to all
    belligerent nations and their governments that they immediately
    sign an armistice and start negotiations on a just democratic
    peace.

[3]Lenin refers to a strike of workers in Germany
    which began on January 28, 1918 in protest against the rapacious
    peace terms pro-posed by the German delegation during the
    Brest-Litovsk peace talks. Over 500,000 workers at armaments
    factories went on strike. The strikers demanded peace without
    annexations and indemnities as proposed by the Soviet delegation,
    the participation of worker representatives of all countries in
    peace talks, the repeal of the war-time laws in the country and
    granting of democratic civil rights to the people. The workers of
    Hamburg, Kid, Leipzig, the Ruhr region and other industrial
    centres also went on strike. All in all, over 1,000,000 people
    took part in the January political strike. Arbeiterrkte were set
    up in a number of cities during the strike.

At the head of the strike were revolutionary
    stewards elected by workers mainly from among the active trade
    unionists. However, the majority of revolutionary stewards were
    members of the Independent Social-Democratic Party, the activities
    of which were directed by collaborators. This weakened the forces
    of the strikers.

Though the January political strike ended in
    the defeat of the workers, its significance was very great. Lenin
    considered that this strike "marks a turn of sentiment among the
    German proletariat (see present edition, Vol. 27, p. 546)

[4]This refers to the newspapers published in 1918-19 in English
    German and French by the groups of foreign Communists set up at
    the C.C., R.C.P.(B.); they were for distribution among soldiers of
    the interventionist armies and among prisoners of war. The
      English newspaper The Call was distributed on the Northern
    Front.  Two German publications,Der Vdlkerfriede(Peace
    of the Peoples andRevolution(World Revolution), were
    distributed among the German prisoners of war and in the
    Ukraine. The French weeklyLa Lansernewas distributed in
    the South of Russia

[5]On December iS (31), 1917, Lenin handed Svinhufvnd, head of the
    Finnish bourgeois government, the decree of the Council of
    People’s Commissars granting independence to Finland. The
    decree was endorsed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee
    on December22, 1917 (January 4, 1918).

[6]Lenin refers to the preparations for a military-monarchist putsch
    in Germany. The leader of the German reactionaries, Kapp, gave his
    name to the revolt known as the "Kapp putsch" to which the Social
    Democratic government offered no resistance. On March 13, 1920,
    army units were moved to Berlin and meeting with no resistance
    from the government declared it dissolved and set up a military
    junta. The German working class responded with a general strike
    and on March 17, under pressure from the working class,
    Kapp’s government fell and state power again passed into the
    hands of the Social-Democrats, who by deceit succeeded in
    frustrating the general strike.

[7]The slogan calling for restoration of the 1772 frontiers implied
    the seizure of Byelorussia, Lithuania, part of the Ukraine as far
    as the middle Dnieper, and the southern part of Latvia; it
    reflected the aggressive tendencies of the Polish bourgeoisie and
    landowners.